Daniel has wanted to be a writer ever since he was in elementary school.He has published stories and articles in such magazines as Slipstream, Black Petals, Spindrift, Zygote in my Coffee, and Leading Edge Science Fiction. He has written four books: The Sage and the Scarecrow (a novel), the Lexical Funk (a short story collection), Reejecttion (short story/ essay collection), and The Ghosts of Nagasaki (a novel).

Long after the mustache had gone out of fashion, he had a big, thick, dirty one.

Legend had it that his mustache was cloned from hair plucked from Tom Selleck’s mustache and had been genetically modified to give off the impression of ruggedness.

He wore T-shirts and jeans. He prefaced everything with, “I don’t want to make a political statement, but...”

He made jokes that were not quite jokes. And he talked with an accent that made him sound slightly Mexican. But he wasn’t Mexican. Not one bit.

He was dirty. None of his advisers knew how he got that coat of dirt. His critics claimed that he would coat himself with special dirt imported from the Saudi desert. They also claimed that he was an East Coast liberal that had been coached to act the way he was by a Berkeley-educated anthropologist.

Frank Hand, when accused of these things by a conservative radio host, stroked his mustache and said, “The East Coast. I have a cousin up there who wants to get into the radio business. You oughta help a feller out.”

Not sure what Frank was talking about, the radio host stopped in his tracks a full five seconds. Five seconds of dead air. Legend has it that the radio host’s head exploded right there on the spot.

Legend also has it that when Frank Hand saw the mess the exploded head had made, he said, “Somebody oughta do something about that.”

Confused about how to handle Frank Hand, the conservatives employed two candidates, the smartest conservative they could find, and an oil baron who employed the slogan, “I’ll drill that economy so hard, she’ll scream jobs!”

To which Frank Hand replied, “Sure, you guys are gonna do that, because that’s what you do. But what about the other guys?”

And finally, after ten years in office, when people had a general sense that things were improving for some at least, a new conservative opponent finally said on national television, “Frank Hand is a demon.”

And then, Frank finally made his first political faux pas when he said, not really paying attention to what had been said, “Somebody ought to do something about that.”

That was the end of Frank.

Legend has it, his mustache moved on and flourished as a city councilman somewhere in Arkansas.